Quiet Days
by Lady Shikyo
Summary: What does a 'retired' serial killer think about while working at home?


A/N: Contains spoilers for I Am Justice up to chapter 8 of that fic. My second shot at first person writing. . .

- - -

_**click-click-tap-click**_

The room is lit lowly. It's late evening.

Probably.

I never paid much attention to the time of day, and I still don't. Time was an illusion, in my opinion. It sped up and slowed down at its own leisure, and it enjoyed screwing with people's plans, making them late or early on a whim. It could make people die too. Give a person too much time and they'll die, or they'll just become shells of what they once were, staring out windows at birds and trees and grass and sky.

Time could also make people forget. Give the world time and memories will fade. That unfortunate shooting accident that killed the man three houses down the right of your own home will eventually melt into the woodwork, abandoned to back-shelves and filing cabinets of your mind. So maybe time wasn't an illusion. Maybe it was a killer. A murderer.

Like me.

Well that put a more interesting outlook on my life. I'm similar to an immortal idea that controls the lives of every person on Earth. Yay. Now I can work again, my philosophical moment (if it can be called that) brought to a nice conclusion. Yay.

And so the keyboard starts to click again.

_**click-click-clicky-taptap-click**_

As I work my mind starts to wander, my body used to doing what it should be doing and moving on its own to accomplish it. This room is empty of people, void of all souls. I'm alone in this homey room with wooden walls and floor, rugs feeling soft to my bare feet resting on them. But I don't mind. I lived without other souls while in prison, and for other parts of my life as well.

Actually, that earlier statement is not true. Another soul is present. There is a spider on the far wall. It is not a big spider, just a little thing that will likely be dead by the morning, if not sooner. But does that little creature count as a soul? When its lifespan is so small, so insignificant? A goldfish lives longer than a spider does, but the fish has virtually no memory; each time it swims around its little tank it sees the world for the 'first' time. In reality, goldfish are capable of living for twenty years. That's longer than some humans.

But does that makeitworthy of a soul? Which has more meaning in the end? Memory or lifespan?

Ah, but who am I to make such ponderings? I used to cut short the lifespan of people all the time, leaving devastating final events in their memories. But that's right. _I used _to, in days long ago. Not that I don't still kill when the time calls for it. One of our annual customers groped my wife the other day.

They still haven't found the body.

Killing still leaves such a thrill in me. It makes me wonder if I miss those days long ago, when my thoughts always carouseled around my next murder. I had much fun at that time, but do I not still have fun in these days? Do I enjoy the events of the world now as much as in my past? Did I favour being loose and a fugitive _then_ more than I favour whatever it is I am _now_? Let me see. . .

I suppose there have been four kinds of 'days' in my life so far. There were the beginning days, at Whammy's. I was orphaned, and then unwillingly placed into a type of 'training' to be the heir for the greatest detective in the world. During that time my best friend committed suicide. Certainly not the best time of my life.

To the filing cabinet those memories go.

Then there were the 'fun' days. That was when I murdered and desecrated and slaughtered and dissected, and generally tried to attract L's attention. Much joy is packed into those days. They shall remain in the cluttered space of my mind for now.

Then there were the 'white' days, labeled thus due to the white padded room I spent that time locked in. That is, when I was locked away in prison. A brief number of days in comparison to those totalling in my lifespan, but none the less. . .

They'd been boring as hell. No, I take that back. Hell would be much more interesting, with the fire and brimstone and all that jazz.

So back to the woodwork those memories go.

Finally, there are the days of now. I still have not come up with a name for them yet, but I suspect my selected companion will help me with that, if I so choose to ask her.

She'd probably help even if I didn't ask.

During this specific day of the specific type of days, the rest of the world is happily muted outside this house's walls. Through the open door I can hear my daughter and her friends laughing and scheming, the happy sound strangely reminding me of rain softly tapping a wind chime in spring. This is quite odd, for simply one reason:

I've never heard rain hitting a wind chime before.

Music that plays forever through the days and nights leave an alive feeling to the whole house, the voices and instruments of the sound playing quietly in this room, though surely making the walls shake on the floor below. Carried up with the sounds are the scents of my son's cooking. I never call the flavours that fly off his cooking 'smells'. That word is too. . .too blunt for his creations. 'Scents' is more graceful a word, wonderful for describing this topic. The scent of bread and cake, of icing and sugar, of strawberries and jam, waft up through the floorboards and rug fibers, staining the house with their rich existence.

Not that he only cooks sweets. It's just that. . .well. . .I have a sweet tooth.

And now I am hungry. Damn.

I push away the keyboard and save my work, and straighten my back to let loose cracks and pops. But I pause when I hear a heartbeat. It's to my back, though there were no sounds of footsteps as that heartbeat approached. Hands alight upon my shoulders, their fingers delicate yet powerful, just like the heart that pounds the sweetest, reddest blood through their veins. Golden strands fall past them, into my line of vision. I look up into the striking blue eyes of my selected companion and decide that, yes.

These are my favourite kind of days.


End file.
